Chapter 58 - Mr. Fool

"Greetings, Hiroki-san." The five superheroes greet Hiroki as they stop ten or so meters away from Hiroki and the jester.

Hiroki wants to tell them to scram because of their insufficient strength, but before he can, the jester interrupts.

The jester who was just a few steps away from Hiroki, suddenly appears in front of the five and, "Hey. Are you good at fighting?", asks.

Four of the five superheroes are stunned at the jester's speed, and the one with the ice disk ability throws one sharp ice disk to the jester out of instinct.

"YES!" The jester cheers in a childish tone as he swipes his hand at the ice disk, breaking it to pieces.

"My turn!" The jester playfully warns before throwing a slap to the ice disk user's face.

The ice disk user cannot even see the attack due to the jester's speed, much more avoid the palm that is only a millimeter away from his face, so he is helplessly slapped away like a tennis ball from a tennis player's racket.

The four other superheroes cannot help but turn their heads to watch as their friend fly ten meters away, smash to the grassy ground, bounce even more like a ragdoll, and finally land on his back, unconscious, but breathing.

Before they can even do anything to help, *whoosh* they see the jester suddenly appear before their friend, standing, bent over as if looking at something interesting.

They get worried that the jester will deliver a killing blow, but to upend their expectations, "HAHAHAHA! Night night ~ Sleep tight~!", the jester instead starts dancing around the ice user's unconscious body.

The four remaining superheroes immediately regret coming, realizing that they severely underestimated the enemy.

It only took a split second before their B-Class Superioris friend, who they know is equal in strength to any of them, got taken down.

Suddenly, they step back as they see the jester stops dancing, stands in place, and looks their way.

"Who's next?" The jester asks, his mischievous grin looking sinister to them, making them shudder.

"Ah. Young man. They just want to watch!" Thankfully for the four superheroes, Hiroki interrupts.

"Oh…" The jester wears an exaggeratedly disappointed look.

"But I'm getting bored! I thought he'd last!" He points at the unconscious ice user as if the ice user wronged him.

This pause in action makes the four young superheroes sigh in relief and at the same time, notice that the jester seems to have a child's mind.

"Are you ready yet? I'm getting bored!" The jester asks Hiroki.

"Not yet. I'm not as young as you, so I need more warm-up." Hiroki nervously says.

Just from the short display of the jester, he immediately knows that he is inferior in speed and physical strength.

The four young superheroes meanwhile, immediately see through Hiroki's act.

"Ah! Yes! Mr… What should we call you?" The shortest of the four superheroes, and who looks to be the shrewdest of them, asks the jester, to help Hiroki.

"Ehhh… My friends call me 'Fool'! But, we're not friends, so you can call me 'Mr. Fool'." 'Mr. Fool' introduces himself.

This makes Hiroki and the four young superiori, hesitate. They did not expect an insult to be used as a name.

"Mr. Fool, my name is Taiga. Nice to meet you." The shorty bravely introduces himself.

"Nice to meet you!~" The jester does a theatric bow.

Slowly, the four young superheroes realize that the jester is much more civil than they expected. They look at Hiroki in confusion and Hiroki can only helplessly shrug.

"Well, Mr. Fool, may I check on our friend?" Taiga asks.

"Of course." The jester steps back from the ice user.

Taiga then cautiously, but intentionally takes his sweet time approaching the ice user. He can already see that his friend is still alive and stable, but he wants to use this a chance to buy time for back up to arrive.

"But wait a minute…" the jester suddenly comments, making the people present nervous.

"Can I go have fun somewhere else? I'll come back after you're done warming up!" He wears a pondering expression.

"No, Mr. Fool. Can you slowly count to 50? I'll be done warming up then." Hiroki promises.

He cannot risk Mr. Fool getting back to crowded places again, so he decides to fight right in this place.

"Too long, but okay!" Mr. Fool nods and, "1…2…3…", actually stars counting.

The four superheroes drop their jaws in disbelief as they look at Hiroki. And Hiroki himself actually cannot believe that his request worked.

At the same time, Taiga hurriedly carries the ice user on his back, "I'll bring this guy to the hospital.", gathers wind on his feet, and takes off.

The three other superheroes cannot believe that Taiga left just like that.

"You kids…" Seeing that Mr. Fool is busy counting; Hiroki turns his attention towards the young superheroes.

"It's been over a minute since Mr. Fool and I came here, but only you five came. That means that the back-up I called are confident I can take him down alone." The lack of confidence in his voice, makes the young superheroes nervous.

"I'm going all out. So, if you kids get in the way, you and your clans can't blame me if you all get hurt, or worse." He concludes.

The three superheroes immediately retreat away to the distance so they can safely watch what is about to happen.

"31, 32, 33…"

As Mr. Fool's count gets closer to 50, Hiroki finally gives up hope of any back-up arriving anytime soon, so he focuses his mind to concentrate, bringing back the exhilarating memories of his days as a Superioris Officer.

Soon, "48, 49… AND FIFTY! Are you ready?" Mr. Fool is done counting.

"Yes." Hiroki nods, his mind in battle mode once again after a long time.

He then materializes hundreds of meter-length steel staff around him, and points them to Mr. Fool's direction.

He could have materialized sharp spears, but to not break the rapport he established with Mr. Fool, he decides to go with the less lethal version of his ability. He is also pretty sure that many interested groups, including his own Murakami Clan, will want to capture Mr. Fool alive.

Hundreds of dull staff are still deadly however, and the three young superheroes watching in the distance immediately shudder looking at them even though they are not the target.

"HAHAHAHA!" The jester then cackles in glee and he starts zigzagging on the ground as he approaches Hiroki.

*shooo-shoo-shooo-shoo*

Hiroki does not want to give Mr. Fool the chance and he immediately starts throwing the spears he materialized.

He is also moving while doing so.

If Mr. Fool takes a certain distance to his left, Hiroki also takes the same certain distance to his left. If Mr. Fool moves diagonally forward, Hiroki also moves diagonally backwards. And if Mr. Fool takes some steps forward, Hiroki takes his own steps backwards.

This simple but effective method is what helps Hiroki in maintaining his range advantage.

Despite doing a good job maintaining the distance though, Hiroki is getting frustrated. It has already been around a minute since the fight began and not a single staff has landed on Mr. Fool yet.

To make him even more helpless, every time he throws staffs that cannot be dodged, he sees that Mr. Fool parries them masterfully by brushing them aside with his palms.

"HAHAHA! I like this dance!" Mr. Fool enjoying dodging is also not helping with his focus.

"Oh?" Mr. Fool suddenly retreats, and stops thirty meters away from Hiroki.

"Hit me! Hit me!" He then starts taunting.

Hiroki takes this as an opening and throws tens of his steel staff to Mr. Fool and any possible direction that Mr. Fool can dodge to.

Mr. Fool however puts one hand on his left hip and simply waits, making Hiroki's eyes widen.

Then, just an inch away in front of Mr. Fool, the cold and deadly staffs fade into nothingness.

"CRAP!" Hiroki's face freezes.

"HAHAHAHA! I knew it! I knew it!" Mr. Fool suddenly starts twirling in place in celebration.

Hiroki also does not know what to do.

There are two major limits to his abilities.

One, is 30 meters: the limit of his abilities' range. The spears he throws will fade once they cross 30 meters away from him.

The second limit is that he can only summon 360 spears at a time.

These two limits however, produce a surprising advantage.

Within a thirty-meter radius, Hiroki can practically throw unlimited spears as long as he controls the interval of his throws.

This advantage protected him from Mr. Fool's incredible dodging skills.

He knows however that the weakness of his ability can be figured out by a clever opponent given enough time. But Mr. Fool, who he thought would be simpleminded, figured his weakness easily and at a very short amount of time.

As he is about to feel regret, he realizes that it is not of his negligence that Mr. Fool discovered his weakness early on, but because Mr. Fool seems to be someone with terrifying battle sense.

He can only take this pause in action as consolation and a chance to take a breather.

He is not tired, but he knows he has to save as much energy as he can, seeing that Mr. Fool is still lively after moving much more than he did.

As he is about to drop his guard, to his surprise, Mr. Fool leaps to the air.

Hiroki smirks because it is easier to hit a flying target. He then continues his attack, but he soon realizes that it is not as simple as he thought.

This time, Mr. Fool is zigzagging at a three-dimensional way by stepping and kicking his foot against invisible walls and ceilings mid-air.

It is unlike when he was zigzagging in a more predictable manner by using a 2-dimensional plane that is the ground.

Hiroki almost gets dizzy from following Mr. Fool's movements with his eyes, and it drastically worsens his aim.

This allows Mr. Fool to easily close the distance.

Hiroki can only hurriedly hold onto one of his spears, and fly away with it to distance himself from Mr. Fool.

He then realizes that he can no longer use his method of maintaining distance as they are no longer in the ground where he can predict Mr. Fool's movements, but in the air, where Mr. Fool is easily changing directions like a dragonfly.

Thinking he is at a severe disadvantage, and attacking any further is useless and wastes excessive energy, he stops throwing staffs and simply surrounds himself with them.

The staffs suspended around him also stop pointing at Mr. Fool, and they start spinning like propellers.

Hundreds of spinning staffs make not only an interesting sight, but also an intimidating sound, and it makes Mr. Fool stop in place to appreciate it.

"WOW! THIS IS HARD!" Mr. Fool amplifies his voice once again so Hiroki can hear what he is saying amidst the WHOOSHING sound being made by the staffs.

Hiroki can only defend and wait for what Mr. Fool is about to do.

He had not carefully studied Mr. Fool's abilities yet so he wants to take this chance to see what the limits are of Mr. Fool's invisible platforms ability. 

He also had not seen how Mr. Fool took out hundreds of people in such a short amount of time, so that makes him even more cautious. 

"I'LL SHOW YOU SOMETHING COOL!" Mr. Fool announces as he does a twirl in the air.

Slowly, Mr. Fool morphs his appearance to the ice user he knocked out.

Hiroki's eyes widen.

The three young superheroes watching on the ground are even more shocked.

As if his transformation is not enough to shock Hiroki and the superheroes, Mr. Fool extends his hand forward, turn his palm upwards, and slowly materializes a meter-long diameter spinning ice disk on the top of it.

"WHAT ARE YOU?!" Hiroki loses his cool. This is the first time he is seeing someone who can copy abilities.

"I'M MR. FOOL! I CAN BE WHOEVER I WANT TO BE~"

The three superheroes on the ground cannot help but be irked by the childing tone coming from someone who looks like their friend who has a rigid personality.

Then, Mr. Fool throws the ice disk to Hiroki.

Hiroki without hesitation, decides that he will dodge.

He had seen ice users fight before. And while his steel spears can break ice, the sharp shrapnel from the ice breaking is troublesome at best and deadly at the worst.

With the disk only a meter away, he flies to his side, letting the ice disk safely pass him by.

Soon however, he sees a smirk appear on Mr. Fool's face, and Mr. Fool's hand still stretched outwards.

He then sees Mr. Fool do a gesture with his fingers.

At first, he is confused, but he immediately realizes what the gesture might mean.

He then hastily dashes to his side once again, and to his horror, the ice disk he dodged earlier, came back, almost hitting him or his spears had he not blindly dodged.

"HEEE HEEE~!" Mr. Fool then summons five more ice disks around him.

This makes cold sweat run down Hiroki's forehead. 

He figures that if Mr. Fool can manipulate six ice disks at the same time, then,

"I really need back-up now."